


Powers of Dawn and Dusk

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, Gen, Harry Potter is the Heir to the House of Black, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 00:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19306738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Her husband and one son dead, her other son in prison, Walburga Black sees the end of her family line coming for her, and part of her is grateful. But another part rages and calls out to the powers that exist in the world, powers that are neither of Dark nor Light—and one answers her. A chance to matter remains to her still, if she sheds her bodily form and raises a child powerful enough to defeat the Dark Lord.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics, a series of short fics and one-shots that I'll be posting between the summer solstice and the first of August. This particular one has one more part to come.

****Walburga stood before the tapestry and stared at it. The death dates glittered at her in silver no matter whether her eyes were closed or open: Orion in 1979, Regulus in the same year. The black blur that was her disgraced elder son was there, too.

Except now it was more disgrace than Walburga had ever dreamed of. Sirius had betrayed his friends, and he was in Azkaban for life. He would sire no child that Walburga might steal away to raise, a child who might be the Black family’s redemption.

She had relatives living, still, but all of them were either disgraced, too old to have children, married into other families, or, like Bellatrix, would end their days in Azkaban, too. Walburga sank to the floor, still staring at the tapestry.

Part of her, part of her that had first awakened in the shadows when Regulus’s death date appeared, whispered its gladness. Perhaps it all _should_ pass into nothingness, this dusty, moldering glory of gilded chairs and tapestries and oaken wardrobes. Perhaps that was what she had always wanted since she had been born a Black, every move she would make known for years in advance and constrained down to the second. Nothing, from her House at Hogwarts to the man she had married, was a _surprise_.

But another part of her reared back and screamed.

No. It would not end like this, with the disgraced ones and those who had chosen utterly to turn their backs on their heritage smiling into their soup. Walburga would not have it said that Andromeda _Tonks_ and Narcissa _Malfoy_ were the glory of the Blacks. She would find a way to survive.

But how? The Dark Lord was gone, and the Blacks had hitched their chariot exclusively to his star in the last generation. The Light wizards would gladly enough throw her into prison of they could prove any hint of conspiracy on her part. The Black vaults were low on coin after how much they had hurled into the war. Minister Bagnold was under the influence of others.

Walburga felt a whisper stir to life in the back of her mind. She turned and went to the library, following the promptings of an old memory. Something, there was something. She had stumbled across a book that she had hidden in one of the old cubbyholes that dotted the house. She had known when she found the book that its time was not yet.

She went right to the cubbyhole, and put her hand in. Moldering pages crisped and cracked under her hand and answered her. She drew forth her hand, and a puff of grey dust came with it.

But the book was resistant to decay, and its title still glowed on it in letters of muted silver, more grey than anything else.

_The Crepuscular Powers._

*

Walburga stood on the flat floor of black tiles in the center of the cellar beneath the kitchen. There was no light here except what a wizard or witch brought with them. The tiles shimmered, dully reflective. Walburga could see shadows trying to escape her when she turned her head.

There was no ritual or summoning circle here. The circle was purely the will of the Black who dared to use this place.

Walburga raised her hands. Magic answered her, leaping from the empty torch sconces on the walls to crackle against her fingers in a wave of blue lightning. Walburga kept her voice light and flat as she announced, “I offer myself to the powers of dawn and dusk in exchange for the preservation of my family.”

The book was open at her feet. Walburga had silver and ash with her, things of grey that the powers that lived in the shadows between the Dark and the Light might appreciate. But it was her will and her prayer that would make them answer—or not. If she was not sincere, this would fail. If she was venal, she would be consumed by the forces whose attention she had drawn.

But was she not Walburga Black? She waited.

There was a long moment when she thought she would have failed, after all. And then a wind picked up, whirling dust that did not exist in a room like this around the corners. Walburga did not step back, but stared into the center of the dancing air, which coalesced into a whirlwind and then faded away, leaving a figure standing there.

The figure was not human. Walburga had not really expected it to be. The crepuscular powers adopted the shapes of animals, because animals were more focused on the goal of those powers: survival.

She _had_ expected to recognize the shape of the animal, though. This beast looked a little like a dog and a little like a wolf, but was neither. It moved forwards, long-legged and undeniably canine, and sniffed around the black floor as though expecting some food. Then it sat back on its haunches and stared at her. It had a long muzzle and a coat that showed shimmering hints of brown and grey.

“You are a power of Dusk?” Walburga asked, since it was twilight outside.

The thing nodded.

“What are you? What form do you wear?”

“They are beasts called coyotes,” said a voice that echoed and whispered from many invisible throats. “Humans in the Americas tried to kill them off. They returned in greater numbers. They walk the human cities there. They intrude even into the magical sanctums. They respond to danger by having _more_ children. They are survivors.”

Walburga nodded and said, “You know what I desire.”

“You know what you would give up?”

“I am prepared to give more than my life.”

The coyote blinked, and the voices seemed to center on it, so that although there were still many, they came more from its throat. “How can there be more than your life in the grip of your will?”

Walburga swallowed. She hated the feeling thrumming through her now, but she would do far more than this for her revenge and the survival of her family. “I am prepared to give my bodily form. To surrender it to you. To become one of you. If will preserve my family in power.”

“You do not say—in blood.”

“I do not know if that is possible.” There was a _chance_ that Sirius would be freed from prison or that the Tonks girl would turn out to be a worthy heir, but Walburga was not prepared to take that chance. “I want power. I want revenge. I want the world to remember that the Blacks existed once and exist still.”

“You would become an anonymous power if you became one of us.”

“But I would be working for the survival of my family. That would make all the difference.”

“You believe there is a decision you could make that would lift you in power?”

“I do.”

“What is it?”

Walburga looked straight into the creature’s eyes. “Even powers as distant from the battle of Dark and Light as you are must have heard of the fall of the Dark Lord. No one knows where the boy who caused that fall disappeared to. I would—”

“Take him? Kill him?” The coyote’s voices were disapproving. The powers of dawn and dusk killed for food, Walburga knew, and in self-defense, but otherwise, they loathed the notion. They did not fight wars. They did not commit murders. Their priorities were an animal’s priorities, and animals did not do those things.

“No. Take him in. Protect him. Help him survive.”

“And you would gain—”

“I demand that I be allowed to retain enough of my own name and form to communicate with him, and tell him who is doing this for him. He will be raised as a Black, with my family’s traditions. There would be some of us, there would be me, always, who would retain enough to tell him that.”

The coyote sat back again and closed its eyes. Walburga waited. She knew it was communing with the powers who were not here at the moment, and she could do nothing to rush that and probably not even something to challenge its decision.

The coyote’s eyes snapped open at last, and it said, “You would aid someone else in the name of survival. You would help him live.”

Walburga nodded.

“He is the Boy-Who-Lived. We will help him achieve the present tense of his voice.”

The powers descended on her.

Walburga screamed once. It _hurt_ , being torn out of her human skin. Old thoughts and perceptions and desires unraveled from her, and she found herself standing, naked and shivering, in the presence of a vast, seething shadow world.

And she _understood_.

There was life everywhere, flourishing beneath the notice of the great Lords of Light and Dark. What did a weed care for their battles? It grew through the concrete of the Muggle cities just the same. Muggles and wizards alike struggled to eliminate rats, and they flourished and ate and survived. Humans increased their presence and their waste, and wondered—in stupidity—why the numbers of crows increased right along with them. Cities hosted the stray cats, the stalking coyotes, the skulking cockroaches that no one bothered to name. And along with traveling and flying and ocean-going humans spread the diseases that would one day increase to the next great plague that would begin to kill them off.

The powers of dawn and dusk cared nothing for whether some certain members of a species died. They cared for _life_ in general. They cherished the living, not the dead.

And Walburga understood, and she joined them, and she left behind her mourning for the Dark Lord, who was dead. It was the living who concerned her now.

Using the eyes of rats and crows and cockroaches, it was no trouble at all to find him in the Muggle world.

*

She settled as a crow on the fence of the garden across the street, and watched as the Muggle man and woman went about their day. They were tense and scowling most of the time. They looked around as if they expected something strange to approach them. They did indeed look like Muggles who had adopted a magical child.

 _Willingly or not,_ Walburga decided. She had never seen such great Muggles—not that she had seen many before she became part of the powers. But they did not look like those who would love or welcome wonder into their lives.

She waited until the sun began to set, and the powers grew throughout the world, in the creatures of dusk that began to open their eyes, in the stretching shadows, in the combination of light and clouds in the sky. Then she spread her wings and lightly flew across the street, landing near the corner of the house behind a high hedge. She transformed back to a body close to her original one there. But she wore a dress that imitated the Muggle woman’s, and she had her dark hair twisted and braided close to her head.

She walked towards the door briskly, no wand in hand, and knocked. She needed no wand now. It puzzled her how she had ever lived with her human body and its limitations.

The Muggle man jerked the door open and growled at her, but she must have matched his version of Mugglehood enough to soothe suspicions. He cleared his throat gruffly. “Yes?”

“I am from nowhere,” said Walburga, but thanks to the magic working through her, he would hear the name of a perfectly respectable Muggle organization of some kind. “We are here about the child recently left with you.”

The man’s face began to turn red, but it was dusk, and Walburga simply stood and looked patiently at him. A second later, the Muggle said pettishly, “What about him?”

“There has been a mistake,” Walburga told him. “The child has living relatives who share his peculiar traits and are willing to take care of him. I am here to fetch him.”

The man’s face immediately turned bright. “Best news I’ve heard all day!” he said, and stepped back to wave her in. “Come in, come in, please, Mrs., uh—”

“Black,” said Walburga, which she knew, thanks to Muggleborn pretenders to her family lineage over the centuries, was a perfectly respectable name in the Muggle world as well. She stepped into the house.

“Black, then.” The man grabbed and shook her hand. Walburga felt none of the disgust she would have felt as a human if a Muggle had touched her, but she did feel a certain crawling irritation about _this_ Muggle touching her. “Come in, come in, please have some tea and sit down. PET! Someone’s here about the freak!”

The woman came bustling around the corner, wiping her hands off on what looked like a towel. She beamed at Walburga, probably because her dress was the same. Walburga, meanwhile, was wondering why she had wanted to name herself after a domestic animal. “Oh, hello! I’m Petunia Dursley. Welcome to our humble home, Mrs. Black.”

“Thank you,” Walburga murmured as she touched the woman’s hand in turn. _This_ one had a faint, far spark of magic. She was a Squib, and might someday have magical children. But she didn’t have enough sympathy with it to be fit for raising a magical child.

“I’ll just get my nephew,” said Petunia eagerly. “Who are these relatives, did you say?”

The Muggle man turned around and looked as if he was interested in the answer, too. Walburga replied coolly as she kept walking into the kitchen. “Some cousins of his father’s. They were far away when his parents died and had not heard about the commotion. But they’re back now and willing to take in young Potter.”

“You don’t know what a relief that is to me,” Petunia breathed, a floury hand pressed against her throat. “ _Thank_ you, Mrs. Black.”

Walburga sat down in an inferior chair and had inferior tea and _decidedly_ inferior conversation with Mr. Dursley while she waited for the child to be fetched. She was doing him a positive favor by getting him away from here, she thought. Harry Potter would grow up in the wizarding world and in the embrace of the powers of dawn and dusk.

Soon enough, Petunia came into the kitchen with a dark-haired toddler behind her. He had brilliant green eyes that Walburga had never seen before. She bent down. “I am Mrs. Black, Harry,” she said. “Would you like to come with me?”

The boy just stared at her and said nothing. Mr. Dursley coughed behind his hand. “Afraid the boy’s a bit slow,” he explained in a booming whisper. “Nothing like our Dudders.”

 _Who has a deeply unfortunate name, as well,_ Walburga thought, and stood. “Well, there is no reason for us to remain here any longer. Harry’s cousins are eager to meet him.”

“Of course they are,” said Petunia, though her face was twisted, as if she couldn’t imagine anyone being eager to greet a magical child. She shoved Harry forwards with her hand between his shoulders. Walburga caught him and hoisted him up on her hip. The Dursleys looked as if they were about to swallow their tongues at the sight of her _carrying_ the child, but Walburga didn’t give them the chance to object.

“Thank you for your help, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,” she stated, in the same monotone that would make her seem Muggle to them, and walked out the door.

She waited until she was firmly out of sight to transform into a flock of crows and carry young Harry Potter upwards. She rejoiced in his sharp shriek—of joy, not horror.

*

They went back to the Black house, but the powers had already been at work on it. The Dark magic had been expelled, and they had healed Kreacher’s affliction caused by his exposure to a Dark thing that the rats had carried off to study. The house-elf heads were gone from the walls. The portraits that would try to corrupt any young wizarding child had been put into storage.

The powers did not destroy. They cleansed.

Walburga assumed her human form and ordered Kreacher to prepare a dinner. Potter sat on the other side of the table, eyes huge. He stared at Kreacher as if he didn’t know what he was. Then again, his parents in their isolation had likely had no house-elves.

“Ask questions,” Walburga said, seating herself opposite Potter.

He only treated her to the same big-eyed stare, and Walburga sighed. She had forgotten that a child this young, of course, would have a limited vocabulary and limited comprehension. The only good thing about that was that he was unlikely to retain any bad impressions from his time with the Dursleys.

“You will have food here,” Walburga said, deciding to talk to Potter as though he _could_ understand her. “And you will have a safe place to sleep, and dedicated guardians.” She raised her hand, and two of the powers coalesced, one as a crow sitting on her shoulder, the other as a coyote beside the boy’s chair.

The boy reached out and embraced the coyote with no sign of doubt. Walburga blinked. Well, perhaps the Potters had had a dog.

“And you will have magic.”

The boy looked up at the word. “Magic? Mamma?”

Walburga tilted her head. The word was appropriate for neither the mother she had been when Regulus and Sirius were hers nor the quasi-immortal creature she was now, but it would do for the creature Potter would create mostly in his own imagination until he was old enough to understand.

“Mamma,” she agreed.

“Yeah!”

The boy ate messily, but the coyote patiently licked the sauce off his hands. It was not so intolerable having him here, Walburga reflected.

*

Harry was learning how to fly.

Walburga stood beside the house and watched him tumble around the air with the crows. It had been a long time, and taken a lot of thinking, until she was willing to let them have Harry to teach. The crows were not careless; none of the powers were. But there was still the chance that an accident might happen, carelessness or not.

Still, Harry was adapting better than many magical children might have if placed in the same circumstances. He woke up in the morning and hugged the coyote the powers had seen fit to give him, and chattered to Walburga about the magic he would learn that day. He ate what Kreacher had made and ran out to the garden. The powers taught him about plants by forming into cockroaches that crawled from leaf to leaf.

Harry’s afternoon, after a lunch that was always some kind of sandwich because that was what Kreacher made, was devoted to the study of languages. The powers made his English better, and then started teaching him Latin, and French, and Gobbledegook. Those were the languages they considered most useful: Latin for the betterment of incantations; French for the language of the country he would most likely visit when he first left Britain; Gobbledegook because it was always useful to be able to converse with those who tended your money.

After dinner, lessons varied. Sometimes the powers taught him maths, coyotes holding different amounts of coins in their mouths and picking them up and putting them down based on the answers to equations. Or they took him flying, as they were today. Or they drilled him in the movements of simple spells, and the motions that, someday when Harry was ready, would become more the motions of fighting.

Walburga objected to none of it. She was the one who put Harry to bed and told him stories of the Black family, which someday he would use his glory to restore.

But for now, everything was “someday.” It had barely been ten months since Walburga had taken Harry from the Dursleys. They had plenty of time.

*

One day, Walburga opened the door of the Black house and found Albus Dumbledore standing there. She remembered him from her days as a student at Hogwarts, when he had been the Transfiguration professor, but he had looked different then. She had to blink at him for a long moment before it occurred to her who he must be.

“Oh, hello, professor,” she said. “Are you here to visit? I’m afraid that I can’t let you use the Black library. Too many of the books are limited to blood family.”

“No, I am not here for that. I want to know why your magical signature was found about the home of Harry Potter’s Muggle family.”

Walburga forbade herself to frown. It seemed that the powers had not changed her magic as much as she had thought. “Well, I went there to visit him, Professor. My son is in prison because he betrayed the Potters. I wanted to see whether it was for a _good_ reason or not. Whether the child was really capable of defeating the Dark Lord.”

“And?”

“I found myself disappointed. It’s hard to measure magic in a child so young, but it didn’t seem to me as if he had an extraordinary amount of it.” And that was right. Walburga was tutoring Harry to release his _potential_ , rather than insisting that he be as strong right now as she knew he could be.

“Did you kidnap him?”

Walburga stared at him. “What?”

“I repeat: did you kidnap Harry Potter?” There was magic gathering around Dumbledore, an aura that rang at her ears and teeth, and seemed to manifest as a shimmering black buzz on the edges of her vision. “His relatives told me that a Mrs. _Black_ claiming to be from an organization acting on behalf of children came to them and told them that Harry would grow up with distant relatives.”

“That is true.”

“ _Well_?”

“I did not kidnap him, Professor. His relatives willingly released him to me, which ought to tell you something about the quality of the guardians that you chose for him.”

The magic by now was large enough to make the front door vibrate, something Walburga found annoying. She clenched her left hand down by her side. In seconds, shadows there formed into a feral cat. It lifted its head and regarded Dumbledore with intelligent green eyes. It would attack if she needed it to. The powers defended their own.

“Harry Potter _must_ grow up under the blood protections! He is at risk from Death Eaters otherwise!”

Walburga rolled her eyes. “What blood protections would those be, Professor? They cannot be based on the blood of the family, because Muggles can’t hold magic like that, and neither can their residences. They can’t be based on love, because of how willing the Dursleys were to hand Harry to anyone who came looking. They can’t be based on a vow of protection, which Muggles likewise are unable to make—and these would be unwilling Muggles if I ever saw a pair. Well?” she added, while Dumbledore stared at her. “I’m waiting.”

“They would be based on his mother’s sacrifice!”

“But Muggles who don’t love him aren’t going to provide him a safe environment, Professor. I told you that before. How would they even teach him about magic if they did love him?”

“Growing up at a distance from his fame is best for the boy. Otherwise, he would have his head turned the minute he entered our world.”

“I assure you, we don’t talk about his fame yet. I consider it inappropriate for a child so young. He’s learning languages and maths and history and the right muscle memories for wand movements when he’s ready for them.”

Dumbledore still stared at her. Walburga looked mildly back. She was just thinking that she had never seen so perfect an illustration of the word “flummoxed” when Dumbledore spoke again. “You don’t care about his survival?”

“Of course I do. I just told you that I am teaching him age-appropriate—”

“He _must_ live at a distance from a Death Eater house such as this one is!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t support the Dark Lord any more, Professor. I support making my family great again, and too many of us died following him.” Walburga held out her hand, and the feral cat leaped up to her shoulder and pressed against her neck, studying Dumbledore with those clear eyes that really were almost the color of Harry’s. “I made an alliance with the powers of dawn and dusk, who exist outside the realm of Dark and Light and care mostly about survival. Harry will live, don’t worry about that.”

Dumbledore apparently tried to stare down the cat, which didn’t work. Then he turned to her, and Walburga thought his face now illustrated “desperation.” “You cannot trust such powers. They might ask for—”

“They asked for the sacrifice of my life. Or really, my existence as an independent entity. I am one of them now, although I retain this kind of body and existence because Harry needs a mother. There’s no price that he will have to pay.”

“There is always a price.”

Walburga blinked. “Because you think there must be? What price would Harry have to pay?”

“He will grow up surrounded by magic. He must inevitably learn of his fame, and he will have to learn of your own family’s past. He will feel betrayed when he learns what his own ‘mother’ has done. Not to mention his godfather.”

Walburga shrugged. “And he will feel grief when he fully realizes how his parents have died, I’m sure. He would have felt worse than that if those Muggles kept charge of him. Those aren’t prices, Professor. They’re called living.”

“I must ask that you give the boy back to me.”

“You have no legal right to raise him.” Walburga caressed the cat on her shoulder. “And you would not find it so easy to take him from me, Albus Dumbledore.”

The professor raised his wand. Walburga called to the other powers, and they answered in a rush of crows from the air. The professor ducked and swatted frantically at his face as they flew past, snatching at his eyes. One grabbed his wand and would have flown away with it if Dumbledore hadn’t Apparated then.

Walburga calmly shut the door and went back into the house. It was possible that she might face political difficulties in the future, but for now, she had Harry’s lunch to oversee.

*

A coyote materialized quietly in front of her on an evening perhaps four months later. Walburga sat up with a frown. Harry had just gone to sleep, and the powers usually departed once twilight was done and her stories to Harry about the Black family’s legacy had ceased. “What is it?”

The coyote paced in a circle, its body becoming steadily mistier. Walburga leaned forwards and gazed into the shadows that made it up. The shadows stirred and parted, and she was looking down on what seemed to be a dark, narrow space from a height. One of the powers must have been in this place in the guise of a crow or perhaps a spider.

There was a man sitting beneath her, with tangled and matted hair. Tears glittered on his cheeks. He lowered his head and shook. Then he whispered, “James, Lily, I’m so sorry.”

A Dementor glided past outside the cell. Walburga growled in unison with the coyote. She hated the Dementors as much as the rest of the powers. They took souls and happy memories, and either way, left people alive in a mockery of life. It was anathema to the powers’ gift of survival.

The man cringed, but didn’t seem to be as badly affected as most humans would have been. Walburga blinked and watched as the perspective shifted. Now the power was more likely in the form of a rat at the man’s feet.

The Dementor passed on. “James, Lily, Harry,” the man whispered, and fell asleep on a filthy bed of straw.

And finally, memories seemed to come rushing back that she had shed with her human life, and Walburga knew who he was. Sirius Black, the son of her human body.

And she knew, from the lack of effect the Dementors had on him, that he must be innocent.

*

Walburga materialized slowly in front of her son’s cell. It had taken the powers some time to learn the regular rounds of the Dementors and when they would be near the cell. She tossed her hood back and stared at Sirius.

Sirius raised his head more slowly than Walburga had managed to form. For long moments, he stared at her with eyes as blank as mirrors when no one else was nearby. Then he stumbled up and clutched at the bars. “ _Mother_?”

Walburga nodded. “Sort of. I’ve joined with the powers of dawn and dusk, and I’m no longer strictly human.” She took a step forwards, and knew that at her heels was a feral cat and hovering in front of her face, unseen to Sirius, was a cloud of gnats. The gathered magic of the powers would force truth out of Sirius. “Did you betray your friends?”

“No,” Sirius whispered, staring in the direction of the gnats even though Walburga knew he couldn’t see them. “I loved them. I wasn’t their Secret-Keeper. It was that rat, Pettigrew.”

The powers rippled in protest at hearing rats maligned, but Walburga was calmer. She still retained enough of her memories to know how often humans would use the word to simply mean a coward or a traitor, not the animal. “So he was the Secret-Keeper? He was the one that your friends chose?”

“Yes. Because I suggested it to them.” Sirius’s face collapsed back into lines of anguish. “It was my fault.”

“I understand why the Aurors thought you were guilty, if you were shouting that,” Walburga murmured. She looked up the corridor as she felt another Dementor drawing near. “I will be coming back to get you out. But I need time to think about how we are going to do that without immediately raising the hue and cry. Try to stay strong, my son.”

“I don’t understand how you’re like this. How you’re so different.”

“I told you. I’ve joined with the powers of dawn and dusk. Dementors don’t make you _deaf_ , Sirius. Do try to listen.”

Before the Dementor could round the corner or Sirius could ask another stupid question, Walburga added, “I have Harry Potter and I’m raising him to know of the Black legacy. So you won’t have to be with just me,” and then turned into a ripple of dusk and soared out of the prison into the sunset.


	2. Chapter 2

In the end, the way to get Sirius out was absurdly simple, but Walburga did need to convince the other powers to help her. It wasn’t something they would have done ordinarily, interceding in human justice—or injustice—for the sake of someone who didn’t belong to them.

But their hatred of Dementors helped, and so did the fact that it was Walburga who was asking, for the son of her human body. The other powers felt a sort of proprietary interest in him, and they went along with it when Walburga explained the plan.

Walburga materialized quickly this time, and reached out a hand. One of the coyotes slipped through the bars and spent a moment walking around Sirius, who was asleep. He woke up a second later and stared at her first and then the coyote. Walburga disapproved. She had taught him better than that, and he ought to have paid attention to the threat closest to him first.

“Mother?” Sirius asked weakly, clasping his hands around his knees. Walburga wondered if he had thought his previous vision of her only a dream.

“I was raising up the ability to get you out,” Walburga told him, and eyed the coyote critically. “Whatever you’re going to do, get on with it!”

The coyote bared its teeth, but it did manage to transform itself into a shadow-copy of Sirius. Only this one was dead and lay there with its eyes bugging out and its teeth clenched in a soundless scream. Sirius recoiled. “You’re going to leave _that_ here?”

“Yes. It’ll remain until it’s buried, and then it will change back into shadow and come back to us.” Walburga held out her hand. “Come with me. You’ll have to change with me for the flight. It’ll feel disorienting, but it’ll be better when we’re back in Grimmauld Place and you can be human once more.”

“How—aren’t they going to feel that it isn’t solid when they touch the body?”

“We _can_ take solid form, you silly boy. What do you think I’m doing by helping to pull you through the bars, or when I hold Harry at night and read stories to him?”

Sirius shook a little as he stood up and tottered forwards. “You weren’t lying. You do have him with you.”

“Yes.”

Sirius took her hand, and in the moment before Walburga turned him to smoke and sunset to pass with her in flight, he looked her in the face and murmured, “You’re not really my mother anymore, either.”

Walburga had no answer to that, but the powers of dawn and dusk didn’t demand one, and Sirius blended into them as they flew. In seconds, they were out of the dark walls of Azkaban, and in flight.

*

Walburga didn’t let Sirius see Harry until he had spent some time alone in a room, meditating, to get his dark memories from Azkaban under control. Then she also insisted that he have a bath and eat a regular meal. When he raged at her and tried to demand that he see _his_ godson right away, Walburga locked him in his room with two coyotes and two crows to watch him. Sirius honestly couldn’t do much without a wand, and he also couldn’t hurt animals who could dissolve into mist the minute he tried to strike them.

Sirius stood silently on the stairs and looked blank when he finally saw Harry. Harry was chasing shadows around the sitting room where once important visitors had sat. The important visitors were dim to Walburga’s memory now when she thought about them. What had they done to be so honored by her?

Nothing, most of the time. Their blood meant nothing, not when she didn’t even wear the body she had been born with anymore.

“How can he be raised—normally, like this?” Sirius asked quietly, as he watched Harry grabbing the tail of a cat that rolled over and changed into a rat. The rat jumped up on Harry’s shoulder and nuzzled his face. Sirius twitched violently at that.

Walburga knew why. She moved so that she could block her son’s way into the sitting room if he tried to do something about the rat, and replied calmly, “Dumbledore left him with a _normal_ Muggle family. I rescued him from it. Harry will grow up as he should.”

“But he needs human playmates.”

“You can be one of those playmates as soon as you’ve proven that I can trust you.”

Sirius shot her a look of betrayal. “How would you know? You’re not even _human_ anymore.”

“I’m the one who’s raised Harry for the last year,” Walburga replied, refusing to be baited. Sirius eyed her as if that made her less trustworthy, not more. “Sirius. Listen to me. You can be a good playmate for him, but not if you go charging in there with some idea that you’re going to rescue him from an awful fate. Believe me, he’s not going to agree with you, and then things will be a lot worse.”

Sirius looked longingly back at Harry, but finally nodded. “Fine. You’re probably right that I need more than one bath and one meal to bond with him.” He hesitated. “But everyone thinks I’m dead. How am I going to improve my life and go out in public?”

Walburga smiled at him. “That’s where illusions are going to come in handy.”

*

“This is _brilliant_.”

Sirius kept his voice hushed as they walked through Diagon Alley, wrapped in shadows that made them look dark of hair and eye and utterly unmemorable. Walburga would only risk such disguises on cloudy days and near sunset, when the powers were at their strongest, but just getting out of the house seemed to be enough for Sirius.

As for Harry, he was turning in circles and goggling at the shops of Diagon Alley as though he had been transported to another planet. Just the sight of people in cloaks and robes and pointy hats seemed to be healing some of the damage those Muggles had inflicted. Walburga smiled at him and tightened her grip on his hand.

They ate ices at Fortescue’s and went to Madam Malkin’s to set up an order for robes in specific sizes, since they wouldn’t have much time to spend in the shop before it closed. Sirius was quiet as Walburga handled the order, and then sighed a little as they emerged. Walburga glanced at him. She understood her son better, in some ways, as a part of the powers than she ever had as a human, but she didn’t understand the expression of melancholy on his face now.

“What is it, Sirius?” she asked, when they had Apparated back to Grimmauld Place.

“I—well, I know that you did this to get the Black family back in power.” Sirius sat on a spindly chair and swung his legs, even though they could easily reach the floor, as they watched Harry fall contentedly asleep in front of the fire. “But what if Harry doesn’t want to do that?” He turned to her, his muscles tightening. “What if _I_ don’t want to do that?”

“Put the Black family back in power?”

“Yes.”

Walburga shrugged a little. “I rescued you because I think you could help Harry and because the powers hate Dementors. You don’t have to do anything about the Black family in particular. Someday, it might be possible for us to find Pettigrew and clear your name, but with you having feigned death, it wouldn’t be possible for you to rejoin wizarding society as yourself. Perhaps having you pose as an illegitimate relative would be a better tactic.”

“But what about Harry? Are you going to _make_ him behave like a Black if he doesn’t want to?”

Walburga blinked at Sirius. “I’m telling him stories and teaching him. I’m not doing anything to influence his free will other than that.”

“But what if he—what if he rejects the family like I did?”

“I made mistakes with you. I’m sorry. But if I don’t make the mistakes with Harry, then he shouldn’t have much of a reason to reject the family the way you did. He’ll want to help and protect it, instead.”

“I still worry about what you may do if he decides otherwise.”

“Then I will change my behavior and try not to make the same mistakes.”

Sirius looked at her, then away. “I prefer you like this,” he said. “When you’re not human, and actually joined with the powers of dawn and dusk. I don’t know how to feel about that.”

“I wasn’t a very nice person as a human, and I know niceness matters to your species,” Walburga said thoughtfully. “So that’s probably the reason. I don’t blame you for preferring me like this. That only seems sensible to me.”

Sirius gaped at her. “You—well, I suppose if you’re not human you don’t have as much of a concept of taking offense either, right?” he said weakly after a minute when the gaping had filled the whole of it.

“Why would I take offense at it?” Walburga asked, and watched, baffled, as Sirius buried his head in his hands and began almost to bark with breathless laughter.

*

“You made a mistake when you brought Harry Potter here under the intention that he would resurrect the Black family.”

Walburga paused and regarded the portrait with interest. It wasn’t one she’d previously paid much attention to. Phineas Nigellus Black seemed to spend most of his time sneering at his descendants, and he had nothing interesting to say about his family, so he played no part, as some of the portraits did, in Harry’s education.

“Why?” she asked. Walburga valued other perspectives more now than she ever had as a human. The powers of dawn and dusk were built on them. They had to absorb what threats loomed to the survival of their own and what they could do to avoid them, the same way the species they favored did. And it was always possible that someone outside them had a new perspective.

“Because the boy is a _Potter_ , not a Black. And a half-blood besides.”

“I am no longer a pure-blood. My human body is gone,” Walburga added as she saw Phineas start to draw in a breath. “And I disowned my son, and that was wrong.”

“Sirius is good to have back,” the portrait admitted, shifting a little and folding his arms so that his green robes swayed. “But the boy is still a Potter.”

“So?”

“That means he will never be loyal to us.”

“But why not?” Walburga asked. She thought the portrait was wrong, but the powers knew something about the Muggle science of genetics, since it was important to survival. Maybe Phineas did, too, and there was something he could tell her about Harry’s Potter blood winning out, even though Walburga didn’t think there was.

Phineas just glared at her. “Because he is a _Potter_.”

“Do you have any arguments that aren’t circular?”

Phineas glared harder, and then vanished from the portrait. Walburga went from painting to painting around the house, to see where his other frame was, but she couldn’t find it. He must come out somewhere else.

Sirius looked alarmed when she told him that at dinner that night. “Old Phineas Nigellus was Headmaster of Hogwarts, Mother,” he said slowly. “He’s probably there right now, telling Dumbledore all about me.”

At least her son no longer called Dumbledore by his first name. Walburga didn’t hate the man any more than the rest of the powers of dawn and dusk did, but she thought him annoying. She shrugged and said, “There are counters to him doing anything. For example, if Dumbledore spreads the word of your survival and escape, then we would find Pettigrew, and he would also have a hard time arguing that you deserved to stay imprisoned.”

Sirius looked at her with his mournful eyes for a long time before he nodded. “Thank you.”

“Pettigrew is a bad man!” Harry announced from the other side of the table. “He’s an enmee of the Blacks!”

“And _you_ ,” Sirius said, leaning over to kiss Harry on the forehead, “are a little genius.”

“Bad!” Harry enthused.

*

Walburga sighed a little as she looked at the man standing in her drawing room. She had known Sirius was doing something behind her back, but it hadn’t concerned her greatly. The powers of dawn and dusk were stronger than him, and if he really did turn against her for some reason, they could withdraw their protection and he would die.

But it didn’t prevent Sirius from being a _nuisance._ And the man in her drawing room was a case in point.

“It’s not right for Harry to be raised by shadows and animals!” Remus Lupin groused, folding his arms.

“He’s not,” Walburga thought she had to point out, since the man was clearly not paying attention. “He is being raised by the House of Black.”

“You can’t claim that.”

“Yes, I can,” Walburga said. She smoothed her hands over the robes her human body wore at the moment and studied Remus Lupin critically. “I don’t believe that being a werewolf automatically makes someone deranged, but what is your excuse if not the lycanthropy?”

Lupin stared at her with his mouth open. Then he spun around and snarled at Sirius, “You told me that she wasn’t prejudiced anymore since she had turned into this—thing!”

“I didn’t think she was!”

“I am only asking what your excuse is, Mr. Lupin,” Walburga interrupted, calm and sighing and gesturing the cats that started to form on the edges of the shadows back into hiding. “I am not prejudiced against werewolves. But I wanted to know why you are acting mental, as I believe my son would say.”

Lupin glared again. “Because Harry isn’t growing up normally!”

“Dumbledore wanted him to grow up with Muggles who hated them. That was the main other option. Why is that more normal?” Walburga asked, curious.

Lupin rubbed his hands through his hair and paced in a circle. “It’s not normal to grow up in a house full of shadows and semi-divine powers and with someone that everyone thinks is dead!” he said, pointing at Sirius.

“Why not?”

Lupin flung himself back in a stained chair and growled at the ceiling. “I couldn’t take Harry,” he said, maybe because Sirius’s mouth was opening and he knew what argument her son was going to make. “It wouldn’t have been normal or right for him to grow up with a werewolf, either.”

“But for better or worse, normality ended for him when James and Lily died, Moony.” Sirius’s voice was still low when he spoke of Harry’s blood parents, his mouth pinched, but he didn’t look as stricken by grief as Walburga had seen when she rescued him from Azkaban. She thought that being away from the Dementors had a lot to do with that. “He wouldn’t get to grow up quietly anywhere else in the wizarding world.”

“Leaving him with his aunt and uncle—”

“Would have condemned him to growing up away from magic and without the truth of his heritage,” Walburga said, shaking her head when Lupin turned to her as if he wanted to argue. She spoke only truth. “They were glad enough to surrender him to the first wizard who showed up.”

“They didn’t even ask your name?”

“I gave them my name. But they didn’t ask about my relation to him or my right to take him. They just assumed that it was better for him to go with me.”

“ _Why_?”

“They wanted to get rid of him.”

Lupin stared at her with his mouth open. Then he gulped and whispered, “That can’t be right. I mean—Lily sometimes said things about how horrible her sister was, but her parents were good people. I can’t believe her sister would turn Harry away.”

Walburga shrugged. It honestly didn’t matter much to her if Lupin believed her or not. Any attempt he made to take Harry away would be foiled by the powers of dawn and dusk, and anything else, she could deal with. “Then you could go and ask her. I’d go in disguise, though. She wouldn’t want to deal with you once she realized you were a wizard.”

“Padfoot, you have to realize how insane this is,” Lupin then tried appealing to Sirius.

“It is kind of insane,” Sirius agreed, with a deep gulp of air. “But it’s the only way that I can be involved in taking care of Harry, and that’s the way I want to be, Remus.”

“I—if Dumbledore knew about this…”

“He might,” Walburga said. Lupin could go and talk to Dumbledore, too, for all she cared, but she thought Sirius looked as if his heart would break, and she wanted to spare the son of her human body pain. “He still can’t do anything.”

“But Harry has to leave the house sometimes!”

“Of course he does,” Walburga said, puzzled. Sirius had once told her that Lupin made good marks. That had meant she’d thought of him as intelligent. He wasn’t acting like it now. “He goes to Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade on a regular basis. Just in disguise.”

“That’s no life for a child!”

“Why would being mistreated by Muggles be one?”

Lupin looked as if he wanted to tear his hair out. Walburga watched in interest. It was probably impossible for one of the dusk and dawn to become bald, so this might be her one chance to see it.

“Sirius, _do something_.” Lupin didn’t tear out his hair, somewhat to Walburga’s disappointment, but turned to her son and waved his hands around in vague gestures.

“Harry is happy here,” Sirius said quietly. “He’s learning to fly from the crows, and he can already write his name. He knows his colors and some of his numbers and he loves the stories. And he’s learning magic.”

“When does he have the time to be a _child_?”

“You think learning makes people not children?” Walburga interrupted. The more she heard about this strange world-view of Lupin’s, the more she wondered about it. He seemed to have a perspective that was very different from any human’s she had ever heard of, but he wouldn’t accept it if she said it was the lycanthropy influencing him. “Did your parents teach you that?”

Lupin actually did yank on his hair. Walburga frowned. She wasn’t sure if Harry should be around someone as unstable as this.

“Just calm down, Moony,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes at his friend and at her at once. Walburga smiled. Her son was doing better and better the more time he spent away from Azkaban. “Talk to Harry and see if he’s unhappy here.”

“He’s only a child, he can’t know,” Lupin snapped.

“And yet, it seems as though you think you do,” Walburga said. “Tell me, where did you get your omniscience?”

She could not understand why Lupin began to tear at his head again.

*

“Are you happy here?” Lupin asked Harry, bending down near him and giving a grimace that he probably thought was a smile.

“Yeah,” Harry said, distracted. He was trying to throw a ball in some direction that a coyote couldn’t immediately catch it. Walburga knew that eventually he would use his magic to make the ball fly and float, but he hadn’t reached that point yet.

He hurled the ball with a twisting motion. It deflected off the nearest corner, and the coyote stood up on its hind legs and caught it as the ball soared towards it. Harry scowled and stomped his small feet. “Not fair!”

The coyote only spat the ball on the floor, neatly, so that it rolled back to Harry’s feet. Walburga smiled as he hefted it again with a look of determination. Until he reached the point where he would use his magic, it was also good training for his muscles and hand-eye coordination.

“No, Harry, listen to me.” Lupin got in front of Harry and took the ball away. Harry eyed him, then the toy. “I want to know if you’re _happy_ here. Don’t you miss your mum and dad?”

“Mamma’s there,” Harry said, and pointed a finger at Walburga. Then he grabbed the ball back from Lupin and threw it again. The coyote snapped it up before it flew two feet. Harry’s scowl spread as if it would split his face in half.

“She’s not your mama. Your mum and dad died. Don’t you miss them?”

Harry thought about that. He knew something about death, more than most children his age, because neither Walburga nor the other powers would conceal it from him, and he had to understand why they valued life. “If they’re dead,” Harry said slowly, reasoning it out, “they don’t come back.”

“Yes,” Lupin whispered, ducking his head.

“Then they’re not here,” Harry said, and shrugged, and grabbed for the ball again.

Lupin let him have it, but glared at Walburga, and crossed over to her side to complain in a whisper. “ _You’re_ the one who did this to him?”

“What did you expect him to do, Lupin? Spend the rest of his life mourning parents he can’t remember?” Walburga shook her head. “Mourning mistakes that he can’t change? I understand that that is the way you have chosen to spend your own life, and perhaps it has value, but I cannot see that kind of value for someone who will be a great wizard.”

“You only want him because of what he can _be_!”

“And for what he is,” Walburga said as slowly as Harry had, because this time she thought she was the one who didn’t understand. “Is there some other reason you would want him?”

Lupin gave her a look of despair. “I want him to grow up and have a normal childhood!”

Walburga studied him. It was odd to realize that perhaps her immediate dismissal of him when she first heard about him had been right, but the reasons wrong. Lupin was not an incompetent because he was a werewolf, but because he would not allow himself to be more. “You think that he’s going to have _that_ with his fame and that scar on his forehead? I am giving him a childhood that will allow him to survive, at the very least.”

Lupin looked away again.

Harry abruptly cried out. Walburga turned towards him immediately, and relaxed when she realized that he had finally used his magic to stop the coyote from catching the ball. Instead, it hovered between them, and Harry laughed and pointed at it and said, “Look, Mamma! Look!”

“He shouldn’t be using magic that young, either,” Lupin muttered between his fingers.

Walburga had decided that she was going to ignore Remus Lupin. She went over and scooped up her child, the child of the powers of dawn and dusk, and kissed him beneath the chin. Harry squirmed, giggling, and then got out of her arms and chased the ball around the room.

When she looked again, Lupin was gone.

*

“I thought—I thought Moony was different.”

Walburga shook her head at Sirius. They were sitting in the drawing room while Harry slept across her lap, a crow perched on his shoulder. “He didn’t do any harm. Dumbledore already knew Harry was here, and the Wizengamot won’t grant him any rights over the boy. Lupin can come back as long as he doesn’t decide to kidnap Harry.”

Sirius sighed and dropped his hands from his face. “I still didn’t think Moony would go straight to Hogwarts and tell him.”

Walburga shrugged and shifted. It was sunset, which meant that the powers were at their strongest, and her body was the most solid, but the position Harry had managed to get himself into was still a little uncomfortable to sit beneath. “Why wouldn’t he be loyal to Dumbledore? The man gave him an education when he was probably the only werewolf student in the country to get one for fifty years. It’s going to take more than that to break him free of those chains.”

Sirius was silent. Walburga looked up to see him staring at her in awe. “What?”

“Sometimes I still can’t believe how different you are.”

Walburga smiled at him and massaged Harry’s back, making him sigh in his sleep. “I am not human, and I cannot remember the reasons that I would have wanted to blast you off the tapestry or declare that you aren’t my son. Why would I retain that prejudice against werewolves? I don’t find Lupin engaging company, but he was your friend. If you can talk to him again in the future and get him to listen to you, then feel free to do so.”

She and Harry almost spilled onto the floor as Sirius tackled her around the waist. Walburga retained her seat and patted his shoulder gingerly, while Harry complained groggily about people crushing him.

“You’re so different,” Sirius declared, pulling free. “I love it.” He hesitated. “Moony said that he didn’t tell Dumbledore about any possible weaknesses the powers have, but it’s possible Dumbledore could have read it out of his mind anyway because Moony isn’t great at Occlumency. What do we do if he starts attacking us?”

“Oh, there’s no problem about that,” Walburga said comfortably, arranging Harry on her lap again and letting him snuggle into her shoulder. “One of the other powers went with Lupin. It’ll form a shadow mask behind his eyes and guard his thoughts that way. If Lupin decides to betray it on his own, we’ll handle it.”

Sirius tilted his head. “You aren’t worried about this, either.”

Walburga let the smile widen across her face in response. “The resurgent House of Black can handle _anything_.”

*

“Are you ready, Sirius?”

“ _I’m_ the one who’s going to be under an illusion,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “I’ll look like any other nameless Black wizard and blend into the background. You and Harry are the ones who are going to be the focus of attention.”

“But we are ready, and I know it.” Walburga had a hard time keeping a hold on Harry’s hand, in fact, he was so bouncing and impatient to walk around Diagon Alley for the first time without a shadowy disguise. “I am asking about you.”

Sirius took a deep breath and nodded. The powers whirled around him as he stood there, forerunners of sunset that made his black hair deepen in color, his grey eyes acquire a touch of blue, and his face look utterly different in the shape and content of the shadows it threw. “Yeah, I am.”

Walburga gave him a smile and tossed Floo powder into the fire. So far, no attack had been launched on them, and so she assumed that Lupin had chosen to stay true to Sirius and the shadow behind his eyes had done its job of protecting his mind.

Harry was three now, and he could speak prepared words well and he was proficient in magic and Black history, a strong, growing child. Walburga had a reputation to retrieve, one that didn’t involve being a recluse or a shrieking harpy. Dumbledore’s best efforts to get the Wizengamot to take an interest in Harry’s case had fallen apart the minute they heard he was living somewhere in the wizarding world instead of with Muggles (Dumbledore hadn’t told them where). It was time.

When they stepped out of the Floo in the Leaky Cauldron, not many people glanced at them at first. Then Walburga saw a few people start to recognize her, and jaws dropping. Then a few more looked at Harry and saw the scar, and gasps spread throughout the room.

Sirius was right. No one paid attention to him as he came through the Floo behind them and paused at her shoulder, although Walburga had all the tales ready about a long-last Black relative when attention did begin.

“This is my adopted son, Harry Potter, also Harry Black when he wants to claim the name,” Walburga announced. “It’s time to introduce him to the wizarding world again.”

Harry bowed grandly from the waist. “Hello,” he said.

The questions began after that, the shouts and the photographs and the desperate attempts at handshakes, but Walburga would always remember the silence that spread in front of them for a moment, a tribute greater than any other to how much power their names and faces commanded.

_The House of Black will rise again._

And if it did so with shadowy rats watching from the corner, ready for any eventuality, and crows that only Walburga could feel circling above the roof of the pub, then that was only proof of how much more it _deserved_ to rise.

**The End.**


End file.
